


You and I

by lazarus_girl



Series: Saudade Series [10]
Category: Skins (UK)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-28
Updated: 2012-12-28
Packaged: 2017-11-22 16:52:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/612050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazarus_girl/pseuds/lazarus_girl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Falling in love is the just the start."</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	You and I

**Author's Note:**

> Future fic. Written for [15genres1prompt](http://15genres1prompt.livejournal.com). Genre: Fluff. Prompt: Lost. Inspired by the Ingrid Michaelson song [‘You and I’](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvMVCHhwTPs). The paint colours referenced in the story are taken from real Dulux charts. Thank you to [@cargoes](http://cargoes.tumblr.com/) for her beta skills and cheerleading.

They have a flat. Together. Not just a flat where they live together, because they’ve done that before, but an actual flat that they’ve bought together with money they’ve saved. Their names are on the rent book. The possibilities are endless. It’s a level of togetherness that Emily never could’ve imagined possible, not because she never believed it would happen, but because she never dared to believe it might. For a lot of reasons, some of which where admittedly her fault and some of which were Naomi’s, she’s come close – perilously – to letting this moment, this future, this life, slip through their fingers. It’s the fourteenth flat they’ve looked at. The first thirteen were deemed either too expensive or too small on first sight; or too dangerous and too far away whenever they made it to the second and either her parents or Gina walked around the viewing with them, checking every scratch, dent, creaking floorboard or ‘dodgy’ attempts at wiring.

It’s not the huge, light, bright, airy loft she imagined whenever she thought of where they’d end up living, but it’s theirs. It’s still something of a shell, sparsely decorated, everything in magnolia with bare floorboards. The little furniture they do have is either borrowed or has been bought for them in the name of housewarming presents, so they can save money for bills. Their life consists of thirty or so boxes, some unpacked, some still sealed. It doesn’t look much, but then, the things that are most important to them now aren’t material. They never really were.

The removal men are long gone, and it’s just them now. The enormity of it hits as she paces the room, casting her eye toward the tiny patches of paint on the back wall of their living room where they’ve been testing out colours – Lost Lake (blue), Dusted Fondant (lilac), Willow Tree (green), and Morning Light (cream) – while nursing the last of a black coffee, sipped from a garish pink polka-dot mug: this is it. This is the very beginning of her adult life. She has a flat, a paying job – a good one at that – and a fiancée she’s hopelessly in love with. It’s the life her teenage self dreamed of every night in the tiny bedroom she shared with Katie, but she could never quite render it fully. The minutia was missing. She loves Naomi, she always has, but she loves _being_ with her too. When she was younger, it always worried her, that should anything happen with Naomi, she’d have to trade in having her as a friend when she became her girlfriend, but the reverse is true. Now she has Naomi, she has both.

It’s a facet of their relationship she never anticipated. Like the simple joy that comes with waking up in Naomi’s arms every day; sitting on the sofa watching crappy television and even crappier films; cooking meals together; lying in the bath until the water’s cold and their skin is wrinkled; staying in bed all day on a Sunday, hours lost in kissing and touching because even though they know every inch of each other, the thrill of tracing those lines hasn’t dissipated.

No one tells you about the tiny moments between the grand gestures. No one says a word about the real, solid proof that love is more than the romance she’s read about between the pages of a novel, seen on a cinema screen, heard in a love song or reduced to cloying sentimentality in the five line verse interior of a valentine’s card. Nothing prepared her realising that love was about more than all those things. Falling in love is the just the start.

She’s pulled from her thoughts by a familiar pair of hands sliding around her waist. Emily leans back into her touch, eyes fluttering closed when there’s a light kiss pressed to her neck. She’s tempted just to turn her head slightly to the left, knowing that if she did, their lips would be touching, and with all the chaos of the move, she’s barely had time to look at Naomi since they left their old place in Uxbridge two days ago – and their days living with Polly, Zaid, and Michael – behind.

“Did you decide on the colour yet?” Naomi asks, sounding almost wistful.

The nearest they got to decorating their last flat was putting up posters.

She lets out a chuckle, “Nope.”

“Useless you are!” Naomi replies, moving away to inspect the paint swatches.

“Charming!” she turns and swats at her playfully. “I was distracted.”

“By what? We’re in an empty flat!” Naomi frowns. “The neighbours curtains aren’t bloody twitching already are they?” she continues, moving to the window to check, arms folded as she peers out.

“You,” Emily admits, simply, eyes fixed on the ‘Lost Lake’ swatch.

“Me? I wasn’t – ” Naomi tails off, and Emily hears the proverbial penny drop. “Oh.”

Then, there’s a sigh, the content kind, and she glances up, embarrassed. “Of all the colours we could’ve picked, Naoms.”

Naomi closes the gap between them, sliding both her hands into Emily’s. “Fate, don’t you think?” she smiles that sweet barely there smile that sets off butterflies in Emily’s stomach. Even now, they swarm just as quickly.

For all that’s different, for all that’s changing, it’s a comfort to know some things stay the same. Immovable.

“I think so,” Emily nods, suddenly overwhelmed. Her voice waivers giving her away.

“You OK?” she tilts her head, trying to catch Emily’s gaze, clearly, concerned.

She’ll blame the move, should she find the words to speak, because really, there needs to be another name for stress that comes with packing up your entire life into a van, driving it somewhere and doing the whole process again in reverse. She’s happy, she’s ridiculously, blissfully happy, but if she opens her mouth, she’ll just burst into tears. Happy tears, but tears nonetheless. It’s the furthest thing from romantic, everything clad in dustsheets, stood together with paint splattered in their hair and all over their clothes, thanks to an innocent paint testing session in their bedroom that descended into a play fight and mid-afternoon sex on their mattress (the new bed doesn’t arrive until Tuesday), but she wouldn’t change a thing. Cast in the last orange rays of a dying day filtering through the too-thin net curtains, Naomi’s the most beautiful girl she’s ever seen. Her breath stalls in her lungs, and it’s all too much.

“It’s just a bit mad,” she sniffs. "To think that over six years ago, you asked me if we could go somewhere, and we went to that freezing lake …” she gulps for air, seeing a tear streak down Naomi’s cheek, “and everything changed. If you’d told me then, that we’d be standing here now, in our own flat, together, and that we were going to be married in eighteen months time, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

“C’mere,” Naomi chokes out, pulling Emily toward her, and holding her tight. “You know what, darlin’?”

“What?” Emily asks, voice muffled as she clings to Naomi.

“I’m glad I phoned you that day, because it didn’t get me just _anywhere_ ,” she takes a deep breath, pressing a kiss to the top of Emily’s head. “It got me you. It got me everything.”

“Me too, babe,” Emily nods. “Lost Lake it is,” and they both laugh, looking at each other through blurry eyes.

Before they realise, their laughter spills over in the form of tears. She reaches up immediately, pressing her lips hard to Naomi’s. It can’t be heard, but they’re saying things, with every brush of their lips, when their heads tilt, and their hands grab for purchase, tangled in hair, knotting the back of a t-shirt. I love you, they say, a hundred ways, without saying another thing at all. Those words have always been there, underneath. Patient, waiting for them to realise it; in between breaths, in lapses of silence, in longing looks. It’s how Emily always knew; in the best of times and the worst of times, that they were only meant for each other. No one else could hear them. No one else knew what it took to love Naomi back.


End file.
